Chapter 1319: Can extraordinary factors be inherited?
"Is this... the extraordinary secret..."
Gretel stood there blankly, staring at the slowly rotating light screen next to the mobile tower spirit.
Just now he was lazy and poured a bottle of Drosophila salivary glands into the electron microscope - luckily there wasn't much.
The electron microscope worked diligently for most of the day, but it gave him a big mess. Black, white, black, white...
Long and short, short and long, black and white keep changing.
Some of these chromosomes have intact strips, most have been broken, and some are even so fragmented that it’s unclear which fruit fly they belong to—
However, among these fragmented strips, scattered golden light appeared!
Gretel didn't know whether such golden light could be seen under the orthodox electron microscope in his previous life;
But now, in the "electron microscope" rubbed by magic hands, it is obvious that part of the fruit fly's chromosomes reacted to these electrons, or related magic.
And such a reaction, under the illumination of the electron microscope and the display of the mobile tower spirit, becomes black, with dots of golden light outside the white strips...
"Is this going to be advanced?"
Cerela also came over to take a look. Gretel did not answer her, but held his breath and looked at it carefully for a long time.
The golden light does not appear often. 100 fruit flies and all the salivary glands will see no more than ten golden light spots;
And where every bit of golden light is located, it must be a fragmented and broken strip, with no trace of integrity visible...
"is that so……"
Grete murmured and fell into deep thought. Cerira was spinning around, spinning around, almost dying of anxiety:
"What on earth is going on!"
Unfortunately, Grete had no time to answer her for the time being. He stared at the few golden lights, motionless, and his whole body seemed to have turned into a statue.
After a long while, the statue turned its head blankly, one by one, towards the moving pagoda spirit. His eyes fell on the pagoda spirit, and suddenly he took a long breath, and his voice became decisive and firm:
"Ta Ling. Analyze the chromosomes, mark the chromosomes with golden parts, and their corresponding chromosomes——"
"Received. Analyze immediately and mark immediately."
Taling answered flatly, and then started working buzzingly. For a long time, nine pairs of chromosomes were specially marked.
Gretel stared at it for a long time and breathed a long sigh of relief:
"That's it..."
Those golden spots did not appear on the opposite chromosome. Moreover, every chromosome with golden spots was severely broken...
"So, when you step into the extraordinary, there will be changes in the chromosomes? And this change will affect the replication of the chromosomes. No matter what the reason, if the replication fails, the result will be death?"
Grete thought silently. There is a certain chance that consuming the juice of the mid-level magic plant will cause the fruit fly to mutate, causing it to undergo extraordinary changes at the chromosome level;
However, maybe it was because of external force or some other reason - in short, the chromosomes did not hold up during cell division and replication.
The golden part is copied incorrectly, the copy fails, and the chromosome is broken...
Then, the fruit fly dies tragically, failing to make the crucial leap.
"If the conjecture is correct, then other fruit flies should also have mutations at the chromosomal level... As the concentration of juice decreases, the number of mutations should generally decrease..."
Gretel was gearing up. He poured out the fruit flies that had died before, one by one, and dealt with them one by one——
Thanks to the modified magic circle, I no longer have to work hard to pick out the salivary glands. When I pour out a bottle, there is a small pile of salivary glands, and when I pour another bottle, there is another small pile of salivary glands...
"Electron microscope! Scan! Look for the parts with golden light!"
"Mobile tower spirit! Mark! Analysis!"
The analysis results are extremely gratifying.
From 1/2 concentration juice, to 1/5 concentration juice, to 1/20 concentration juice, the proportion of mutant chromosome segments in fruit flies has been declining, but it has always existed.
Accompanying the presence of golden light is the phenomenon of chromosome breakage, without exception.
"If this is the case, then fruit flies raised in low-concentration juice should also have a chance of advancing..."
This is consistent with Gretel's common sense, or in other words, it is also consistent with his common sense in his previous life.
In my previous life, when I watched Xianxia, those children from aristocratic families who ate spiritual rice and the meat of spiritual animals were more likely to advance than children from poor families;
In this life, let's not talk about mages - mages mainly rely on research to advance, not food and drink, but the knights Gretel knows, even the temple knights, need a lot of meat, and the supply of Warcraft meat...
Of course, this speculation still needs to be verified by experiments.
Gretel rolled up his sleeves and continued to try. Since 1/20 concentration still kills everyone, and 1/50 concentration does not kill anyone, then, first test the half-lethal dose?
Tick tick tick, tick tick tick. Grete poured thirty bottles of juice in one go and poured them down without hesitation. One batch, then another...
This experiment alone took a full five days, mainly mixing the juice, controlling the concentration, and counting fruit flies. It was really annoying.
If there weren't enough skeleton soldiers to attack, just Gretel and Serira would have been struggling for so long.
One concentration, another concentration, and another concentration, hundreds of bottles were prepared, and the half-lethal dose, or the concentration closest to the half-lethal dose, was presented in front of Gretel:
It is not the middle value between 1/20 and 1/50, that is, 1/35. It is a very subtle value, 1/42.37...
Grete misses the pipette gun very much. Alas, if there is a high-precision pipette gun, it will be much more convenient to prepare this thing...
But fortunately, letting the mobile tower spirit control the dark gold skeletons and let the dark gold skeletons do fine operations has a very good effect. When Your Excellency the Immortal designed this group of skeleton soldiers, he obviously took the needs of research into consideration...
With the 50% lethal dose, the subsequent mutagenesis work would be much more efficient. Grete randomly selected 4 bottles from the 10 bottles of 50% lethal fruit flies on the shelf.
Instruct the living fruit flies to change to a bottle, pour out the dead fruit flies, collect the salivary glands, and throw them into the electron microscope:
Well, at this concentration, one of the four bottles of fruit flies has no light spots, and the other three bottles have 1 to 2 spots each...
"Gretel, what about the living ones?"
"What should I do? Keep raising it!"
Gretel took a deep breath. Those fruit flies that survived half of the fatal test were kept and watched for generations.
Randomly divided into five groups, one group was fed with half-lethal amount of juice, and the power of nature was used to promote their rapid growth and rapid reproduction;
One group was fed with half-lethal juice and allowed to grow and reproduce naturally;
One group was fed with 1/50 concentration juice, using the power of nature to promote rapid growth and reproduction;
One group was fed with 1/50 concentration juice and allowed to grow and reproduce naturally;
The last group is fed with normal food and allowed to grow and reproduce naturally...
In this comparison, the first group grew to maturity within one day and reproduced one generation. Gretel was pleasantly surprised to find that the second generation of fruit flies, fed with half the lethal dose of fruit juice, died less!
Is this...an increased tolerance to extraordinary juice?
In other words, it’s not far from advanced?!
Gretel's eyes brightened.
He threw away the dead fruit flies, picked out the salivary glands, and scanned the chromosomes. Sure enough, he made an extremely exciting discovery:
The proportion of gold in the chromosomes has increased slightly. Moreover, golden spots also appear on the chromosomes on the opposite side!
Even if the extraordinary factor cannot directly advance the individual, can it still be inherited and accumulated in the chromosomes?